


The Death of a Tower

by oh_simone



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Post-Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 19:10:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12613444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: After Grindelwald's death, two MACUSA wizards are sent to Nurmengard to retrieve recovered files and artifacts, and encounter something far more terrible.





	The Death of a Tower

**Author's Note:**

> I tried real hard to make Halloween, guys, but I didn't.  
> Thanks to Minty who is as steady a reader as always.
> 
> See endnotes for spoilery(?) dead person if that's your thing.

The main road didn’t lead to Nurmengard, but you could see it, jutting from the top of a cragged, sharp incline, a black spike of matte, unbroken stone.  From the International Portkey Station, they'd taken a Regional Floo, then a local Muggle rail line deep into the Black Forest. The representative of the Zaubereiministerium’s municipal office that picked them up was kind enough to point out the tower as the steered a battered old Mercedes from the even, asphalt road, and down onto a dirt trail that led right into the thick of the pines.

“Almost there,” the driver said.  He was named Hans, perhaps early thirties, who'd volunteered to shepherd the MACUSA representatives to Nurmengard. It was a sleepy town he was posted to – this visit was probably the most excitement their little civic office had had in a year.  “There's very few ways to get up there—the easiest is flight.  However, since Grindelwald's death, we are finding new openings through the trees.”

“The wards didn't collapse all at once?” The old woman in the backseat stared at the tower, her expression faintly troubled.

“No, ma'am. They are wearing away, but slowly, though no one knows why. Some sort of remaining enchantment, they think. We only found this road through last month, which has made bringing items for review back to the office much easier. When we logged our findings, it was a total surprise to find some of them linking to an open case in America! Quite astounding,” the driver said, directing the car into seemingly open forest. “My chief wanted me to thank you for coming in, Mrs. Scamander. We had thought you retired. “

“Oh, please call me Tina. I have been, for many years,” she replied, “but it is my name on that case, and I was already on the right side of the Atlantic, anyhow.”

Her companion, roughly middle aged and dark-haired with fine features, stared silently out the window. She'd introduced him earlier as a nephew from the Kowalski side of the family.

The car was climbing now, and on very rough track – even with spells cushioning the shocks, it was an unpleasant ride. The driver apologized, though Tina waved it off.  

“What wasn’t clear to me, was why didn’t your office just ship the materials you found?” she asked.

Hans shifted in his seat and wrenched the gear. The car lurched over uneven dirt and then evened out. “We tried to remove some of the items from the premises, ma’am, but were unable to.”

“A protection of some sort?”

The driver shrugged. “Perhaps. Whatever _he_ left behind, it isn’t making it easy to destroy that—” he said some harsh German word that Tina didn’t care to translate. “No one will go inside anymore—they say it’s haunted by something beyond a simple ghost or poltergeist. We have a ghost in the city hall here, Fraulein Schimmel, but she's quite nice. Has a good head for maths, so she likes the accounting department in particular.”

“You’re not scared? Of… whatever remains in that tower?”

Hans shrugged, then chuckled self-consciously. “To be honest? My grandmother used to tell me stories about the tower when it still ran under Grindelwald, so I am a little fascinated with it, and its history.”

The Americans exchanged looks; it was jarring to hear the site of many nightmares discussed so casually. If Tina had had her way, Grindelwald would have been summarily executed, and the tower razed to the ground the day the war had ended.

The car turned, and edged onto a thin cliff road. Here, Hans slowed considerably as the path switch-backed precariously. In the backseat, Tina Scamander, née Goldstein, turned to her companion.

"Would you like to remain in the car?"

His head was tilted back against the headrest and his eyes were closed, by all appearances falling asleep. "You're not going inside alone," he said without opening his eyes.

She frowned. "I've been here before."

"Not like this," he said, and they fell silent.

Finally, with a roar of the engines, the Mercedes hauled itself over onto a flat, packed dirt road that narrowed to the tower. The trees fell away sharply, leaving the final path bare and bleak.

Hans slowed and the parked the car. “From here, we walk,” he said apologetically.

It wasn’t far or difficult. The old Auror took her nephew’s arm as she climbed out of the car. The last time she had been here, it had taken a solid week of heavy fighting and painful losses for their forces to secure what they’d driven up in an hour. Kowalski inclined his head and she nodded with a sigh. They followed Hans up to the tall, iron door. No gates had ever been built for Nurmengard—Grindelwald had mountain trolls that roamed the mountain freely. And now, under the wan, blue sky of an overheated German summer, it was another sort of shock to see Hans, in his cheerful yellow shirt and Muggle jeans whistle as he loped up to the door and unlocked it with a cursory pass of his wand. Somewhat reassuringly, the door swung open with an ominous groan, revealing more darkness and knife-edged shadows.

“It is pretty dangerous, now,” Hans cautioned.  “It’s not quite collapsing as one would expect. Please, follow me carefully.”

They passed into the entrance hall, Hans and Tina with their wands up, the tips brilliant with Lumos. Kowalski trailed behind, hands in his pockets. Though it was dim, his steps were sure and firm.

“My dear, a little more light?” Tina asked absently as she peered into the shadowed interior. Her nephew obligingly opened his hand, palm up, and a globe of light flared up bright and steadily enough to illuminate almost the entire space. It hovered above his palm then rose up and hung above their heads.

“Nice trick,” Hans said.

“Thanks,” he replied. He was taking in their grim surroundings of heavy stone walls and ceilings that stretched up into the blackness. They stood at the foot of a set of steep stairs that carved around the inner walls of the hall. At the second level, the stairs continued climbing, carved from the walls that led in jagged, weaving lines up to the countless prison cells that lined the walls. It was echoingly silent—not even mice or stray birds had repurposed the corners and rafters of that nightmare atrium. At one time, the whole tower had been at capacity, and particularly unlucky prisoners were chained instead to the narrow ledges between cell doors. The ones that died hung limp until their flesh and bones were loose enough to slip through the metal cuffs. Their bodies had littered the central ground floor of the prison.

Hans gestured awkwardly. “We try to avoid the ah, pit. It’s become less… stable.”

“We're happy to comply,” Tina said. The two Americans stood in the center of the entry hall; she looked at her nephew, and he looked up into the vaulted ceiling above. “Why don’t you take us to retrieve the MACUSA belongings then, Hans?”

“Oh sure.” Hans pointed back at the door. “Well, we’ve already cleared one obstacle. The door sometimes won’t open at all. Groans and shakes, and locks itself tight, even when you go in with the old iron skeleton key. Today, the tower must be having a good day.” He sounded, in his youthful ignorance, almost fond of the place. Tina visibly bit back a retort. “We will need to go up, to the office for the American items.” He started into the gloom, some offshoot corridor that was barely visible, his companions trailing him. They passed under stone arches that gleamed wetly in the bluish light of Lumos, and passed rooms with doors hanging off their hinges. At the end of the corridor, Hans pushed open the heavy door and led them up a narrow set of stairs. They climbed silently to the second floor and stepped onto smooth, dusty marble. Tina glanced about and shivered—she remembered this hall, lined with enchanted glass to hold certain prisoners in the reflections, so that Grindelwald could adopt their faces at will. When they’d stormed the prison in 1945, they’d pulled politicians, officials, heiresses, even a royal or two from the mirrors. Not everyone who’d been missing had been found though.

Around them, the temperature dropped.

“Ah,” Hans hissed and stopped abruptly. His wand, leading the way down the corridor lined with cracked and broken mirrors, sputtered and dimmed.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s the Tower,” Hans said, voice suddenly taut. “What we spoke of earlier, the remains of protections that Grindelwald had left—it’s unpredictable.”

The wandlights went out abruptly. Hans cursed and tried Lumos again, but his wand flickered once and died again. Kowalski’s globe light was the only source left, and it shone a flickering, pale blue-white. Their reflections fractured freakishly in the mirror shards all around them as an icy breeze swept down the corridor.  

“You had better step back,” Tina told Hans tersely, her grip on her wand tightening into a battle-ready grip.

It was quiet for a time, only the sounds of their breathing, the rasp of dust under their shoes and the shushing of clothing as they shifted weight. But then, from the far end of the corridor came a faint rattling sound. It was difficult to parse what it was—not footsteps, and it didn’t sound like the wind. But it grew louder and louder.

“ _Chains_ ,” Tina whispered. Kowalski flicked his hand and the globe, pulsing weak light, floated ahead of them, revealing foot after foot of hallway, its walls and floor littered with glass and dust. The rattling grew urgent, louder, and then a popping crack split the air—from the far end, the splintering crash of glass began. As they stared, the mirrors remaining on the walls fell and shattered, one after another, as a massive fracture split further down the wall towards them. Glittering shards of glass exploded into the air. “Protego,” Tina called, just in time for the glass to slide off the shield.

“You should leave,” Kowalski said to Hans, but he was staring hard into the darkness where the rattling had abruptly ceased.

“I—yes, but,” the young man stammered. “The office is right- right down the hall, to the left. It’s a box, a—cardboard case.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Kowalski said.

“Go,” Tina ordered. “Start the car.”

Hans nodded. “ _Ja_ , okay, the car.” He hesitated for another moment but when the next mirror shattered danger-close, turned and scrambled down the stairwell.

“Mercy Lewis, if this damned tower gives me a heart attack I’ll drag Grindelwald out of hell just for the special pleasure of sending him back down,” Tina hissed. Everything had gone still now, but her Auror instincts remained unsettled, if the way her wand was poised was any indication. The temperature around them was freezing, though it was a sultry summer afternoon outside. Their breath hung, cloudlike in the air.

“…It’s not magic,” Kowalski said after a moment, and shivered.

“What do you mean?”

“Not just magic,” he amended. Abruptly, he frowned and flexed his hand. Above them, the globe’s light flickered once, and then resumed a steady, strong glow. “…Shall we keep going?”

“I would very much like to write this case off as a loss,” Tina grumbled, but they both knew she was lying.

“I’ll go ahead,” Kowalski said, and they continued towards their goal with grim determination. The glass crushed under their feet in snapping crunches and the air was thick with dank cold and something else, like the scent of the hollow of a rotted tree. They reached the end of the corridor without finding the source of the rattling, but here, they saw the fracture in the wall had offset the gap by two inches. “This place is decrepit.”

“I don’t understand,” Tina said. “If it’s the wards collapsing, they shouldn’t be doing this. Something—something is doing this independently.”

“Like I said, it’s not all magic,” Kowalski said. They were standing now at an intersection. To the right was a barrier spell, left in place by the German office, if the number of _Achtungs!_ flashing over the surface were any indication. Behind it, the floor rose at a slight decline that curved slightly,  probably winding down to some other level of horror. Kowalski turned away slowly, as if reluctant to leave his back towards the space.

The left hall was relatively benign. Still dark, still unsettling, but it was clear the German office had cleaned up some. Pine and citrus from cleaning spells scented the air, and someone had attempted to open the bank of windows further down. They hadn’t had much luck.

They approached the office door. It was closed tightly, and stubbornly remained locked and finally, Tina stepped aside. Kowalski flexed his hand and gripped the handle; it resisted, but not for long. The door swung out grudgingly, opening into a space that Tina remembered well—Grindelwald’s war room and office, the only luxurious space in the entire building, had been hung with marvelous, stolen magical tapestries and thick silky carpets. The room had been dominated by a massive table with a gleaming lacquered surface that had been enchanted to reflect the position of his armies.

The bones of the room had remained, but it bore little resemblance to the its former glory—the tapestries and art objects were long gone, restored to their original owners, the carpets burned or looted; the walls were cracked and dark with mold, revealing blackened timber and twisted rebar. More mundane were the cardboard boxes that lay, some half-packed and flipped on their sides, that dotted the floor and tables.

The faint rustle of chains whispered from the unseen corners of the room.

“ _Accio_ MACUSA box,” Tina ordered, and no one but those who knew her best could tell how unsettled she was. There was no reply to her summoning, but for the chains again, and a soft, high pitched noise. Her companion had been poking about the room, his globe light drifting above their heads to cast a wider circle of light. At the sound, he returned to her side, a frown marring his otherwise fine features.

“We should go,” he said.

“I'd rather not have to come back,” she said, checking the boxes closest to her. “I don't understand why they didn't do this while he was still alive.” She straightened with a wince and crossed the room to the next set. Her hands were beset with tremors, but whether it was from nerves or the cold, it wasn’t possible to say. Kowalski came to help her, but it was clear he was uneasy.

“Tina,” he said. Harsh and discordant clanging reverberated in the air, and the high-pitched sound was louder now, something unsettlingly reminiscent of teeth chattering.

“I can handle a third level haunting,” she snapped, shoving aside the box before her and snatching the next one up. This one had a paper label stuck to the flap, and in ball point pen, ‘Für MACUSA’. “Got it, let's go,” she said, and turned with the box under her arm, only to stop in her tracks. Kowalski froze before her, his arm thrust out to keep her behind him. Their ears were ringing with rattling chains and teeth; frost crackled in their hair.

The globe light flickered wildly, casting strange and twisted shapes that twitched and stretched and coalesced into something almost familiar. Tina gasped and clutched the box reflexively; Kowalski cried out in shock—he blindly grasped Time’s arm and with a wrench of magic that shouldn’t have been possible in such a warded place, Apparated them away.

They stumbled into being at the foot of the tower, and scrambled down the narrow pathway, barely missing a chunk of black masonry that slammed to the ground where they’d appeared. Half dragging each other, they only stopped when they reached the car where Hans was waiting, gawping open mouthed from behind the windshield. At the cliff edge, the tower seemed to waver, mirage-like, and even under the sun, the cold burned at their skin. Kowalski still gripped Tina’s shoulders.

“It can’t be,” Tina said, voice wavering. “Mercy Lewis, it can’t be!”

Kowalski only swallowed, gaze fixed on the tower, and said in a croaked whisper, “Mr. Graves!”

 

When Kowalski came out of the shared shower in the German municipal office’s guest quarters, he found Tina crouched on a cushion in front of the fireplace, head stuck in the green flames of a Floo call. From the sound of it, she was trying and failing to obtain the personnel files for one Percival Algernon Graves, missing since 1926 and officially declared dead in 1937. He wandered instead to the box they’d taken from Nurmengard, a standard brown file box, and rifled through the contents before carefully arranging the more relevant items on the coffee table. Mostly notes, Grindelwald’s files on American forces from his informants, some signed with well-known codenames. Some magical artifacts were packaged carefully in cushioning spells as well—some that had been missing from MACUSA archives since the 1920s, including a highly valuable and extremely rare scrying glass brought over on the Mayflower. But there were also personal effects.

“…don’t care. Tell Director Quahog I recall well his qualifying exams in 1989, and he didn’t care a puffskein’s fart about it then, and sure as hell doesn’t now… Yes, it _is_ that important. Yes, immediately. _Thank_ you, Josefina. Goodbye.” Tina ended the call and sat back on her heels with a groan as the flames went out. “Come over here and help me up.”

He did so without protest, and she allowed him to steady her before brushing off his hands.

“Newt will set the Fire Slugs on me if I don’t make you rest and take your potions,” he said mildly, but she only snorted and leaned over the table. Gently, she picked up a small, dusty black pin, scorpion-shaped and studded with emeralds. The charms for safety and well-being had long ago worn off, but in its heyday, the protection it offered had been invaluable.

“Do you remember,” she said out loud. “We had plan after plan to get into that place, but it was, oh, _impenetrable_. And finally, the best idea anyone had was to Polyjuice into the mountain trolls and weres, so that was what we did. Twenty-seven of us, clutching our wands and Polyjuice potions, climbing up that wretched mountain at midnight.”

“I remember,” he said.

“We drank those potions, and we strolled up that long path to the tower, and we gloated that we’d somehow outsmarted Grindelwald. But later, when that second troop of the French and British tried the same trick, their disguises were burned right out once they walked out of that forest. They later thought perhaps the anti-disguise ward had reset, or was raised after the first of us arrived, but now I don’t—I don’t know.” Her shoulders slumped, and she set the pin back down carefully.

“You think he was there somehow?” Kowalski asked. “Recognized you, or the other American Aurors, perhaps?”

She sat heavily into a chair. “Oh, my dear. Looking back after so many years, it’s simple to suggest that things happened a certain way. It may have been him; the brush of wards may have been reminiscent of his style. I don’t know.”

He sat down across from her very quietly. In his hand, he held the final item that had been laying tucked into the bottom of the box. It was an elegant black wand capped in silver, tarnished with age and neglect.

“You think he was a traitor?”

Tina rolled her head back and stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I hope not.”

He set the wand carefully back into the box, the contents of which were fated to be extensively examined and catalogued and studied by MACUSA investigators and archivists. The more personal items would likely be checked into long-term storage—of the main Graves line, it had died with Percival Graves.

“I don’t think he could have been a traitor,” he said after a few minutes. Tina met his clear, dark gaze. “I… never knew him, but you’ve always spoken about him with respect. And I trust your opinion.”

She smiled faintly. “Thank you, sweetheart. Either way, I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

 

Nurmengard the next day was no improvement; it seemed in worse condition, if anything. As if yesterday’s events had stripped away its artifice of invulnerability, the tower’s walls were visibly duller and seemed almost uneven; more jagged pieces littered the bare ground, having fallen there overnight. The weather accommodated the mood further by being overcast and unexpectedly cool and blustery. Unusual, but no more than the decision to return to the tower a second time.

This time, Tina and Kowalski didn’t bother the German office for a ride. He took her arm and sidealong Apparated to the abrupt tree line. The walk across the bare path was no less intimidating; there was an added oppressiveness, as if they were being watched from one of the innumerable narrow arrow slits in the walls, where offensive curses once rained down upon attacking forces.

“We come in peace,” Kowalski said. Tina threw an elbow into his side.

There was no resistance as they pushed open the main door, but the sense of being watched was an almost physical pressure now—hostile and wary. In the entrance hall, Tina strode to the center, wand at her side.

“Percival Graves,” she said, her voice ringing against the high stone ceilings. “If that _is_ you, we’d like to speak with you.”

Kowalski affected a look of casualness, hands in his pocket, but he’d never needed a wand, and his gaze was wary and alert.

There was no reply at first; they waited and waited, and called his name a few more times, but whatever it was seemed reluctant to appear. Kowalski caught her eye and tilted his heads towards the stairs. She swallowed and made a face, but nodded. They returned to the stairwell that led up to the hall of mirrors, Kowalski’s globe light leading in place of Tina’s wand.

“Mr. Graves,” Tina shouted down the corridor. “If you’re there, please come out.”

From the end of the corridor, the rustle and gust of wind answered her, glass breaking against hard surfaces. That was the only warning before the gale shrieked down the long hallway with sudden ferocity, rampaging in a storm of debris and glass shards and the manic chattering of teeth. Throwing an arm around the older woman’s shoulders, Kowalski threw up his hand in a shield spell just as the raging wind descended on them, battering them furiously from all sides. They clutched at each other as—whatever it was moaned and roared at them from beyond that thin layer of spell. And from the depths of the storm, they heard words being spoken.

_Go—Away—leave—leave—no—more—no—_

Tina grasped Kowalski’s arm to her and raised her face into the gale. “ _Mr. Graves!”_ she shouted, or tried to. Glass sliced at her skin and the wind snatched at the air in her lungs until she gasped. “ _Stop!”_ Kowalski yanked her down a split second before a shard of glass half a foot long whistled past them, lodging in the wall behind. She gave a strangled cough, but continued shouting.

“STOP, SIR! IT’S GOLDSTEIN! TINA GOLDSTEIN! WE’RE HERE TO TAKE YOU HOME!”

The wind cut abruptly, and Kowalski jerked the shield spell closer as broken glass dropped from the air, a cacophony of crashing and splintering that seemed to last forever. The silence that followed was resounding in contrast.

Slowly, the two of them straightened from their hunch. Kowalski carefully wiped the glittering dust from eyes before blinking them open.

His globe was now bright enough to light the entire corridor—all the chaos and destruction laid bare and somehow made mundane by visibility. Well, mundane, but for a small scattering of mirror shards, suspended in an elongated pillar before them. In the reflections, piecemeal, a haggard figure was just visible, gray skin; gray hair; gray, tattered clothing; sunken hollow eyes that burned like embers. The rusted remains of chains laced his body. It stared at them silently without blinking as Kowalski and Tina straightened up to face it.

_Goldstein._ The figure’s mouth in the mirror didn’t move. The words were heard all the same. _I… remember. You._

“Mr. Graves,” Tina said, sounding very young and very old simultaneously. “I was one of your Aurors, under President Picquery’s administration.”

… _Seraphina._

“Yes, sir.”

The mirror cloud shivered and the reflection rippled uneasily.

_I was taken. Lost. Prisoner._

“You went missing in 1926,” Tina said in a bare whisper. “Grindelwald… he assumed your identity. When we caught him, he said he’d killed you.”

_LIES_

The wind rushed past their feet, but didn’t pick up beyond that.

_Experiments. Prisoner. He took my wand. Who are you._

The mirror shards scattered and reconfigured restlessly, but the gaze was heavy on Kowalski.

The man straightened up, and after a moment, inclined his head respectfully. “You didn’t know me, sir. I am called Sanford Kowalski, but I was once known as Credence Barebone. I knew your… imposter.”

Another agitated ripple of wind.

_Grindelwald._

An emotional blowback of eye watering fury and helpless anguish tore through Tina and Credence, but it was gone as quick as it appeared. Credence worked his jaw, breathed in, and managed, “Yes, sir.”

_You are not ordinary. You passed my wards. He— did this to you?_

The man once known as Credence hesitated, then nodded.

“Mr. Graves, can you tell us what he’s done to you? Why you’re here?” Tina asked,. The mirror shards pivoted to her.

_Captured. Bound._

The final word ground like stone, resonant and sinking deep into the bone. Credence and Tina shivered.

“Why did he bind you here? To him?”

_Grindelwald is gone. I am not. I am not._

 “Focus, Mr. Graves,” Tina pleaded. “What did he do to you to bind you?” But the glass was shifting restlessly, scattering the light in pale speckled swathes over the ground.

_I must walk._

“Mr. Graves!”

_Iron. Rowan ash. Blood and bone and blood and bone._

Credence had closed his eyes. When the mirror cloud, released from their suspension, crashed and skittered across the floor, he opened them.

“Don't worry," he said heavily. “I've got it.”

 

In the end, it was easy, now that the wards weren't fighting them. They went down the ruined corridor, and turned to the right, where the warning signs the German office had put up were waved aside. They found him at the very bottom of a seemingly bottomless spiral, in a room with no doors or windows that nevertheless slid apart for them silently as they approached. Inside, the floor was crossed with chain links, five, that ran from the corners of the room and met in the center where they disappeared into a raised slab of stone. They avoided the chains, old but active conductors of the wards that protected the tower.

The stone slab was spelled shut seamlessly, but Credence smoothed his hand over the surface, wincing at the biting cold, and felt where the spells lay. He broke them open with a twist of his hand, and the stone was just ordinary rock. It slid away easily, broke in half as it cracked onto the floor, but neither Credence nor Tina were paying attention; they were peering into the hollow center of the stone, lined with old wood, where the chains were wrapped about an old, desiccated husk of a man, his fine clothing moldered away to rags.

Shocking, how small one seemed in death. Percival Graves had died curled into himself, clutching his knees close for comfort, alone and far from home.

Tina sighed, long and shakily, bowed with the weight of this discovery. “Oh, Mr. Graves.” She pressed her lips together tightly and blinked several times.

Credence clasped her shoulder and stared at the man he’d never truly met, who’d marked a sea change in his life anyways.

“Let’s take him home,” Tina said, and drew her wand. Together, they sliced through the chains; above their heads, the tower trembled with each broken link, but they worked steadily. As they came to the final link, Percival Graves reappeared in hazy wisps, watching them silently. When Credence caught his eye, he smiled faintly. The last chain broke, and a loud crack thundered down from very high up; the room shook in earnest, drifts of dust shaking loose from above. The wards had fallen; the protection spells were gone, and the tower was only an ordinary building of black masonry and impossible magic.

Tina tenderly spelled the body out of the stone hollow and transfigured the broken stone lid into a makeshift coffin. “We’re taking you home, Mr. Graves,” she told the ghostly figure, who was rapidly losing shape. “You’re going home, sir.”

Percival Graves, a shadow of his old, dapper self, inclined his head solemnly, and finally, finally, closed his eyes and went to his final rest.

**Author's Note:**

> dead!Percival Graves is the Duracell battery for Nurmengard's protections. 8Dbb
> 
> A half-hearted presence at https://chouette.dreamwidth.org. I'll be adding author commentary there eventually.


End file.
